


Somewhere Between (where you were and where you belong)

by Kizmet



Series: Timeline E:  Steve stuck in 1970 [2]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: (Less due to content than as a warning about the author's perspective), 1970's Era, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Avengers: Endgame (Movie) Spoilers, Civil War Team Iron Man, Earn your Happily Ever After, F/M, Gen, Time Travel
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-05-18
Updated: 2019-06-07
Packaged: 2020-03-07 05:49:10
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 6
Words: 9,853
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18867004
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kizmet/pseuds/Kizmet
Summary: A different branch of time.  Steve gets stuck in 1970 and has to make due there believing that the Avengers failed in 2023.





	1. Nightmares and Fever Dreams

**Author's Note:**

> My feeling about Steve’s ending is that there are two options:
> 
> 1) Steve went back to the existing timeline, was Peggy’s unnamed husband all along and didn’t change anything that would cause a branching timeline. The whole time he was married to Peggy she was running S.H.I.E.L.D. and he was hiding that HYDRA had infiltrated S.H.I.E.L.D. He did not do anything to rescue Bucky from HYDRA sooner. He stood by while Bucky was ordered to murder Howard and Maria Stark.
> 
> 2) Steve went back and created a branch timeline where he could make changes. But as the Ancient One explicitly explained, that wouldn’t change anything for anyone else from the original timeline. Even if Steve rescued the Bucky in his new timeline immediately after arriving in the past that doesn’t change anything for the Bucky in the existing timeline, it just creates a new Bucky who gets a better life. 
> 
> The first option just makes my skin crawl. Even if you consider him knowing that any changes he makes would result in a branch; he creates a new option where things are better but the old option where the bad thing happened remained, even knowing that to live out his happy little life with Peggy while Bucky’s being tortured and the days are counting down to Howard and Maria’s murders (and all of the Winter Soldier’s other victims but Howard and Maria especially because Steve knows Howard, he knows their son, he saw Maria and Howard die… and he just lets it happen!?!) And the second option feels like the writers granting Steve a little pocket universe, his own personal wish-fulfillment fantasy life, and… um… ick. 
> 
> In either case, Steve doesn’t contribute to the recovery after the Snap is undone beyond returning the Infinity Stones and Mjolnir, which fair enough, he can retire if he wants, I suppose. But he also doesn’t do anything to help _Bucky_ adapt to life free of HYDRA in the future. This ending implies that Steve couldn’t be happy in the future. That it was just so terrible for Steve waking up in 2012 with only the very elderly Peggy to provide a connection to his past that his only option for a HEA was to retreat to the past…. Well, now Bucky is regaining his mind and his freedom in a distant future with the only connection to his past being a very elderly Steve. Steve just put Bucky in basically the same scenario that Steve found intolerable. I guess “the end of the line” happened when Steve got a chance to create a life with Peggy (and possibly with a less damaged version of Bucky).
> 
> So the basic premise of this AU (see prequel story or just read the rest of the note) is Steve still ends up in the past but not because he choose to abandon the future. The ‘branching point’ from canon is when Steve goes to Hank’s lab in 1970 there was only one vial of Pym Particles. Without letting Tony know about this little problem he gives the one vial to Tony so he can return to 2023 with the Space Stone and complete the Avengers’ plan to reverse the Snap. Once the Avengers succeed Steve expects that they’ll recover Hank, he’ll make more Pym Particles and someone will come get him… Only no one does. Steve doesn’t know Natasha died to get the Soul Stone. He doesn’t know about 2014-Thanos attacking. He can only speculate about what happened in 2023 after he sent Tony back that would have prevented them from coming back for him.

Thunderous, discordant noises left Steve’s ears ringing, they denied him sleep and sent his thoughts into disarray. His ankles and wrists were chained to a steel chair which was bolted to the floor, he couldn’t even cover his ears. Too bright lights burned white spots into his vision, not that there was anything to look at besides cracked concrete. 

He wasn’t sure how long he’d been there anymore. But more and more his scattered thoughts were filled with an awareness that no one was coming for him. That they’d failed. The Lost Half hadn’t returned and there were no more Pym Particles. No more chances.

The room was suddenly plunged into silence and a dim-half light that might as well have been pitch black to Steve. The sheer relief from the abuse to his heightened sense was almost enough to start him sobbing. 

He only had few moments, barely time to think she was early- Other times she hadn’t come until his throat was parched and dry. -Before he heard the door creak open behind him followed by the staccato click of heels on tile. A slim hand cupped his jaw and guided a straw to his mouth allowing him a few gulps of water. Reflexively he turned towards her, pressing his cheek into her hand. On some level Steve knew she was responsible for his current misery but his only respite was when she was there… And it was Peggy.

“You can have more, just tell me your name.”

“Peggy, You know who I am,” Steve murmured.

The hand pulled away. He heard her walking away, her steps clipped and angry. The unseen door behind him opened and closed. The lights came up to their former painful brightness and the noise returned.

Steve shut his eyes, he tried to tune out the noise. _‘They’d failed. No one was coming.'_ In his mind Steve tried to block it all out. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d slept. Time in general had assumed a weird fluidity, telescoping into eternity, vanishing in a moment. The din took on a tinny, distant ring, the irregularity that had kept it from fading to white noise for so long somehow ceased to matter. Steve found himself staring past the cracks in the wall, between the mottled old cement and white spots dancing in his vision a picture started to form. 

_The Avengers gathered around the Quantum platform. Tony, Scott and Rocket all gesticulating wildly as they argued, brainstormed. Bruce shaking his head, feet on the ground. Thor, Rhodes, Nebula and Danvers occasionally adding something as the madly veering conversation careened in and out of areas they were knowledgeable about. Natasha and Clint on the sidelines, watching the debate like spectors at a tennis match, so hopelessly far out of their depths. Gradually the debates wound down. Nothing, nothing left, no more Hail Mary’s, no last straws to grasp. They’d tried, how they’d tried, but there was nothing left. Bruce left first, just turned and walked away. Clint and Thor took their cue from him, they stumbled out of the Compound even more broken than when they’d arrived._

Steve felt a spear of guilt lance through him, for the false hope he’d held out to Clint, to Thor. For Bucky, Sam, Wanda and so, so many others who hadn’t been saved. But he couldn’t find the energy to raise his head or blink away the vision- Hallucination? -That was playing out before him. 

_Tony drove slowly, as he never drove, away from the compound. Admitting defeat didn’t come naturally to any of them. He dragged his feet, waiting, anticipating that last minute burst of inspiration or insanity that would put them back in the game. Slowly, slowly the car wound its way up the narrow forrest road, until it opened out in the driveway of the isolated home Tony and Pepper had built as their escape from a lost world._

_The porch door slammed open at the first sound of tires on gravel and the little dark haired girl flew out. Tony reflexively masked the defeat and exhaustion that had clouded his features since leaving the Compound and he was smiling as he stepped out of the car._

_“Daddy! Where were you? I missed you!” the little girl pouted._

_“I missed you too,” Tony replied sweeping her up into a hug maybe a fraction too tight. While Morgan’s face was buried in his shoulder, Tony looked past her to where Pepper waited on the porch. When their eyes met, she read the defeat in his face but it was gone by the time their daughter pulled back._

_Morgan carried the dinner conversation, telling her father everything she’d done while he was gone. Despite everything, Tony’s interest was genuine and his smiles for her lost a touch of the strain. After he’d tucked her in, Tony sat on the couch, Pepper curled up against his side. There was a blurry picture in his hands, someone he’d failed to bring back, and they grieved for the loss anew._

_Days turned into months and the wounds ripped open by hope-now-crushed scabbed over again. The moments of desolation became fewer. Tony’s smiles became genuine. Morgan grew older, began to long for companionship beyond her parents and the few friends they remained in contact with. Tony and Pepper began reaching out and helping the world recover. Reversal was a jagged-edged dream that had cut as they tried to grab it but healing was possible and Tony had always been the futurist._

There’d never been a moment of epiphany but over the last five years Steve had felt the creeping revolation steal over him that he’d never done right by Tony. He’d judged Tony and found him lacking before even meeting him. 

Then, after Tony had disproved all of Seve’s opinions, there’d been Bucky and the secret of Howard and Maria Stark’s deaths that had created a wall between them. A wall, Steve had gradually come to realize, that he’d never tried to pull down or go over. He hadn’t wanted to care about Tony and it had shown in every aspect of the team’s interactions. A wall that, even in the best of times, had always kept Tony on the outside looking in when it came to the team. 

_‘Then I had the gall to say they were Tony’s family. What was I thinking? ...Maybe this time, I finally did right by Tony. Even if we can’t save everyone- No, we didn’t save anyone. But at least Tony’s still with his family. At least I could send him home.’_

* * *

Peggy Carter left the interrogation cell and headed straight for Hank Pym’s lab, collecting Howard Stark on the way. “What do you have?” she demanded of both men. Then, before either could answer she added, “Could he believe he’s Steve Rogers?” 

Hank held up the shattered remains of the device they’d taken off the man currently held prisoner a few levels above. “It runs off of Pym Particles and it’s designed to shrink someone down to a subatomic size. I’ve always theorized that going into the quantum realm would be a death sentence but this proves it’s possible to survive it, use it… I don’t know what for but whatever he and his cohort were up to it required incredible computations.” He held up a computer chip he’d taken from the device. “I don’t know how it’s possible to make something like this but, unless I miss my guess, this little thing has ten times the computing power of that monster Zola’s making in the basement.”

“Peg, I think we’ve got to start considering the possibility that he actually is Steve Rogers,” Howard said.

The glare Peggy turned on Howard was enough to have him stepping back, hands up in surrender but it didn’t silence him.

“The shield? It’s the one I made for Steve, the same alloy down to a thousandth of a percent,” Howard continued. “He’s got all the right antibodies in comparison to Steve’s enlightenment papers… And I do wonder about Erskine’s sanity now that I’ve seen them, the serum could have generated super viruses instead of or in addition to amping up his immune system. We were goddamn lucky. But hell, the general public’s only just started to catch a hint about the rise of antibiotic-resistant strains. Back then we weren’t even thinking about what else we might enhance with Project: Rebirth…. The guy in that cell, he’s got Steve Rogers’ fingerprints.”

“Why do you have Steve’s fingerprints?” Peggy demanded.

“Because I wanted to know if they’d change,” Howard said. His face flushed, “I took his whole palm print too. I don’t believe that shit about life line and such, but my Ma did. I wanted to see if we changed his fate by giving him the serum? Ridiculous, I know but… I have a record of his finger prints.”

“I- still-“ Peggy shook her head. “He’s not Steve. What if he’s some sort of sleeper agent? The war’s left the country in such turmoil… And we all know it’s only a matter of time before the President’s paranoia blows up in his face. A scandal involving Steve Rogers, on top of everything else? It would be devastating.”

“What can I say Peg, If you hadn’t dumped a certain blood sample I’d have a better answer for you,” Howard replied.

“All I have to do is look at SI’s contribution to this latest war to know I made the right choice in not trusting Steve’s legacy to you,” Peggy replied sharply.

Howard’s shoulders stiffened. “Carter, on account of Dan’s memory, I’m going to pretend you didn’t just say that,” he said. “The Tesseract’s gone, along with our -um- guest’s cohort. He used Hank’s particles to go... Somewhere we can’t follow.”

“Now that I know humans can survive the Quantum Realm it’s only a matter of time before I crack it,” Hank protested. 

“Maybe you will,” Howard replied. Then he nodded to the broken device in Hank’s hands. “But will it be soon enough or will you run into the same wall I’ve been trying to get past with the Tesseract: Our tech just isn’t far enough along, yet. We’re at a dead end, so I propose that we… Give our guest enough rope to hang himself. We act as if we believe him and we watch and see what he does.”

“I will not risk Steve’s legacy,” Peggy snapped.

“So we tell him, with everything going on, trust in the government at an all time low. This just isn’t the time for Steve Rogers to return. We set him up under a different name and if that throws a wrench in his plans so much the better. Our chances of catching him only improve if he has to improvise.” 

Peggy’s lips compressed but she didn’t disagree.

“So it’s a plan, we turn off the sensory screw-job and start making nice,” Howard said. 

“He’s not Steve,” Peggy insisted again. Then she sighed. “But… Everything points to it working, even if he knows better he’s turning to me for comfort. That’s why I wonder if he even knows that he’s not Steve. I think he’s trying to please me but he doesn’t have the answers I’m asking for. It was one thing when I thought he was trying to use my memories of Steve against me. But if someone’s done something to him, if he’s just someone’s cat’s paw and he honestly thinks he’s Steve…” Peggy shook her head. “I can’t do this to him anymore.”

“Then it’s settled. I’ll call Maria, tell her to set up a room,” Howard said.


	2. A New-Old World

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I’m working off of one viewing of EG and I won’t be watching again until it’s out on video. So with that caveat, what I took away from the Ancient One’s conversation with Bruce was that he couldn’t go around looting the past for the benefit of his timeline without consideration for the impact on the new timeline left in his wake. Bruce’s response was ‘if we’re careful to not change anything while we’re borrowing stuff it won’t create a new timeline.’
> 
> I’ve heard the interpretation that removing an Infinity Stone from a timeline could cause the timeline to collapse or something but that wasn't how I interpreted it so in this story it is not the case. The Ancient One’s concern wasn’t because the timelines are dependent on the presence of the Infinity Stones, it was just that the Time Stone is part of the arsonal she uses to defend the planet and she wouldn’t just give it up for the benefit of some other timeline (at the detriment to her own). So the timeline Steve is stuck in is not inherently at risk because it's missing the Space Stone.

_‘The footsteps, they’re wrong.’_ Steve thought blearily as the cessation of cacophony was immediately followed by the door creaking open behind him and multiple footsteps coming towards him.

Then there were hands on his wrists. _‘What’s going on?’_ Of necessity there had been restroom trips, blindfolded, ears plugged. Released from the chair but only after other restraints were placed on him and accompanied by several guards. The first time he’d tried to escape and learned that the guards carried some sort of stun gun, the effects lingered longer than Natasha’ s widow bites. The first time had been humiliating, the five- fifty? times after that blurred together.

“We’re sorry Steve. We know you’re who you say you are, now.”

 _‘Howard,’_ Steve thought. He looked around for Peggy, twisting his body and making it harder for Howard and the other man to get the shackles off his legs and other arm. He found Peggy leaning against the door jam, her expression troubled, her eyes on the hall. _‘Are they breaking me out? Isn’t Peggy in charge? When’d, how’d the WSC take over?’_ He’d been told about how Peggy, Howard and Colonel Phillips had founded S.H.I.E.L.D. as a successor to the SSR but he didn’t know where the WSC came from.

“There we go.”

Steve jerked around at the familiar but startlingly younger voice, “J.A.R.V.I.S.?”

_‘Was J.A.R.V.I.S. a digitized person like Zola? Zola! HYDRA! Is that why we’re escaping?’_

Jarvis and Howard helped Steve up and steadied him as his head spun and his limbs protested moving after being restrained for so long. Peggy led the way out of the cell. The halls were darkened, not completely deserted but much quieter at the late hour. Peggy strode confidently in front of the three men and no one questioned her.

As they walked Steve felt the pins and needles of blood returning to his extremities intensify to near agony then fade. By the time he was being loaded into the back of a car he was almost walking on his own. Howard climbed in beside him while Peggy took shotgun and Jarvis started the car. Steve kept his eyes fixed on Peggy but the soft whir of tires against pavement and the lack of painful, bright lights sent him to sleep almost before they left the base.

“Hey, we’re here,” Howard said shaking Steve awake.

Steve blinked his eyes and checked that Peggy was still visible in the front seat. He wasn’t sure how long he’d slept but it wasn’t long enough.

“Just a little walk and you can have an actual bed,” Howard encouraged steering him up a flight of stairs.

Steve vaguely remembered the stately old house. Tony had taken him there once, shortly after he’d come back from his motorcycle tour of the country, to see if there was anything in Howard’s collection of Captain America memorabilia that Steve wanted. He remembered the house full of drop cloth draped forms and smelling of dust and disuse, not shining floors and the faint, lingering smell of dinner in the air.

Steve stumbled to a stop at the head of the stairs blinking in confusion at the low fence blocking their way. “Maria says we need to put one at the bottom too,” Howard commented as opened the gate.

“You’ve got months to finish baby-proofing before Tony starts crawling,” Peggy said. Steve jolted in surprise at the sound of her voice. It was the first thing she’d said since they’d rescued him and for a moment he wondered why she wasn’t asking him questions.

_‘No one came back for me. We failed. The Snap wasn’t reversed. I have to, I have to… To do something. Why couldn’t we make changes to the timeline? I’m here, I don’t belong here, I can’t NOT be here. How can I not change things simply by being here.’_

“HYDRA’s in S.H.I.E.L.D.,” Steve blurted out.

Peggy and Howard froze.

“Zola,” Steve continued. “Zola- He hasn’t changed. He’s still the same guy we captured in ‘41, when we lost Bucky. He’s been rebuilding HYDRA within S.H.I.E.L.D. this whole time.”

“Daniel never trusted Zola,” Peggy muttered almost to herself. Her face paled, “Kept him on a short leash. Oh G-” She spun on her heel and rushed out the door.

“Go after her,” Howard shouted at Jarvis. “At least make sure she verifies it before she shoots Zola between the eyes... Maybe try to avoid witnesses too, I don’t know.”

“Yes sir,” Jarvis tossed over his shoulder as he ran after Peggy.

Steve just stared at the door where Peggy had vanished, his entire body braced for a blow. After a few moments he realized that the was waiting for the noise to start again.

“Well… Any other bombs to drop?” Howard asked wryly.

It took a moment for Steve to drag his attention away from Peggy's departure and to take in Howard's question.  Then, reluctantly, he nodded.

“Suppose I should have known,” Howard sighed. “Anything we need to know right now or can it wait until you’ve had enough sleep to be half sane again?”

Steve thought about it for a minute then shook his head. “There’s so much, it’s all a jumble.”

“It’ll be better in the morning,” Howard promised as he guided Steve into the guest room.

After being sleep-deprived, for Steve didn’t know how long, he couldn’t not sleep, couldn’t stay awake for more than a few moments when nightmares or a sense of wrongness from the lack of discordant noise and painful lights woke him. Every time he woke he looked for Peggy and her absence left him feeling disconnected and nervous. When the morning came he felt better but still not rested, still unsettled.

Howard stuck his head in not long after the sun rose high enough to fill the room. Then he shut the door and Steve heard him shout excitedly, “Ana! He’s awake! Bring up some breakfast! He wasn’t getting anything except that astronaut crap in a tube at S.H.I.E.L.D.!”

More distantly Steve heard a baby start to cry and woman’s voice irritably shouted back “Howard! You woke him!”

Then the door opened again and Howard came in, he gave Steve a shamefaced grin. “Give me a bomb to disarm and I’m fine but I set that kid off every time.”

Steve stared at him with blank incomprehension.

“So feeling better?” Howard asked. “Anything else we should know? Besides it being highly likely that Zola had Daniel murdered... We knew all along that there was something fishy and when you said Zola was rebuilding HYDRA, well-”

“Who’s Daniel?” Steve asked.

“Er- Peggy’s husband. You know it’s 1970, right Steve? It’s been twenty-five years since you went down with the Valkyrie. It’s- Peggy never forgot you but life goes on. They got married in ‘51 and have two daughters. Stephanie, named for you, is -um- nineteen. And Michelle, named for Peg’s older brother, is sixteen,” Howard explained awkwardly.

“Oh,” Steve said softly.

“So, that device you had and knowing about HYDRA, anything you want to tell me?” Howard hinted. “Oh and watch out for Hank Pym, by the way.  He’s overprotective when it comes to his research, has distinct opinions about people who steal his shit.”

“We were trying to save half the lives in the Universe,” Steve protested. His face fell, “I think we failed.”

“Well, you’re from the future right?” Howard asked brightly. “It hasn’t happened yet. We can still stop it.”

Steve shook his head, “No.”

“Why not?” Howard demand.

“I don’t know,” Steve said. “It’s, it’s _time travel_ , what do I know about that? But from what Bruce was saying about how we had to put the Infinity Stones back- I think, I think we created a new timeline and everyone is still dead where I come from… I failed Bucky again.” Eyes widening with the sudden realization, Steve lunged up right and grabbed Howard. “Bucky’s alive. He survived the fall, HYDRA has had him ever since.”

Howard yanked futilely at Steve’s fingers. “How about you get ahold of yourself... ‘stead of me.”

Steve jerked back as if burned.

Howard took a few steps back away from the bed as he straightened his shirt. While they both took a moment to collect themselves Ana Jarvis brought up a breakfast tray. Howard took the tray at the door and sent Ana on her way. “Get something in your stomach, then maybe let me ask some questions,” he told Steve as he put the tray on the bed.

After Steve had finished his eggs and most of the ham Howard asked, “How did you get to the future? Was it something to do with that box we recovered from where the Valkyrie should have gone down, the Tesseract?”

Steve hesitated.

“If we’re in a different timeline already what’s stopping you from fixing anything you can?” Howard pressed. “You can’t change anything for them but we’re right here, right in front of you."

Steve rubbed his forehead and looked around for Peggy.

"Steve," Howard said insistently.  "Look at me.  Maybe the time you came from is doomed, I don't know.  But this future isn't fixed.  Tell me what happened so we can avoid it.  You went crashed the Valkyrie into the Arctic Ocean in '41 but I looked at that thing that brought you here, it didn't come from '41.  You came back in time, not forward." 

“Um- The Tesseract?  No.  Maybe it could have but no," Steve said.  As he spoke his gaze turned distant.  "I got to... 2012... The hard way.  The ice froze me but serum kept me alive. S.H.I.E.L.D. found me, thawed me out. There was- Was an alien invasion.  We won.  I thought we’d always win. Tony knew better.”

“Tony?” Howard's jaw dropped. “The guy with you? The one who stole the Tesseract?” he asked insistently.

“We needed it,” Steve said. “Thanos, he came back. He beat us, got all six Stones. He wiped out half the life in the galaxy... With a Snap. Then he destroyed them. We had to go back in time, back before they were destroyed. We only had enough particles for one shot at each Stone. Bruce said it was important to put them back where found them, that we’d cause a Branching Timeline… And that was bad? But they didn’t come back for me. Didn’t bring back the Stone. They would have. I think we failed. Five years of no hope. Then finally we had another chance. And we failed again.”

“No use crying over spilt milk,” Howard said carelessly, breaking Steve's thoughts out of their downward spiral. “You’re here, the Tesseract is gone. Nothing we can do about it now. But you keep talking about Stones? What’s that got to do with the Tesseract?”

“The Tesseract is just the container," Steve said.  "A way to use it, the Space Stone.  One of six Infinity Stones."

“What were you going to do with the Stones once you had them?” Howard asked.

“We were going to reverse the Snap,” Steve said. “Bring everyone back. We only had a small supply of Pym Particles, Hank Pym was the only one who knew how to create them and he was lost in the Snap.”

“Knowing Hank, that’s no surprise,” Howard said. “I’ll let him know you were stealing his stuff to try to save his life… He might forgive you. So it didn’t work out… Might have been better to never let this Thanos do it in the first place.”

Steve shook his head, “That wouldn’t work. I didn’t get it but that’s what Tony said.”

“He mentioned having a kid, a daughter, when I bumped into him stealing the Tesseract.  Was that real?” Howard asked curiously.

Steve nodded, confused.  

“Was she born before or after this Thanos did his thing?” 

“After,” Steve said.  

Howard nodded to himself.  “And when he said stopping Thanos preemptively wouldn’t work, was that before or after anyone said anything about branching timelines?”

“The Guardian of the Time Stone was the one who told Bruce about branching timelines, when we went back to get the Stone,” Steve said.

Howard considered things for a while. “You understand Time Travel isn’t my area of expertise either,” he said. “But your guy, Tony?”

Steve nodded.

“At first he might not have been considering branching timelines as a possibility,” Howard said. “If you can actually change your own past, and you change it so that you don’t have a reason to change it… Well then you wouldn’t go back to change it but the reason you didn’t need to go back was because you did go back… And that’s a contradiction, you see. No good. But branching timelines? You don’t have to worry about contradictions. I don’t know what it is that this Guardian knew, maybe making new branches is inherently bad, I just don’t know. But I do know what’s done is done. There’s no way for you to bring back that Tesseract your friend stole. We are living in a new timeline.  The only thing for us to do is make the best of it, however we can.”

“That, yeah, that makes sense,” Steve agreed slowly.

Howard grabbed a chair and spun it around to straddle. “So let's talk about how we're NOT going to end up with half the Universe dead here.  To start with, no Tesseract. How’s that going to change things?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> One thing I found myself thinking during the part where the Avengers were initially discussing how to use time travel to fix things was that Tony's goal was to find a way to reverse the snap without erasing Morgan's existence.


	3. Plan for the Future

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> My favorite MCU inconsistency rears its head again. Maria Stark is pregnant in 1970… I suppose she could be in the first trimester and it could be fall. Thus Tony’s born in the Spring of 1971 which would make him 20 in December 1991 when his parents are murdered and he can take over SI from Stane when he turned 21 as is stated in IM1. Which leaves the only inconsistency being in the supplemental comic that puts Tony being born in May of 1970, making it impossible for him to turn 21 AFTER his parents are murdered.
> 
> But the tone of the IM1 line: "And at seventeen, he graduated Summa Cum Laude from MIT. Then, the passing of a titan. Howard Stark's life long friend and ally Obadiah Stane, steps in to help fill the gap left by the legendary founder. Until at age 21, the prodigal son returns and is anointed the new CEO of Stark Industries."
> 
> It still sounds like Howard’s death happens closer to Tony graduating at 17 than taking over SI at 21. So as far as this story is concerned, Tony is born very shortly after the Tesseract was stolen and in the original timeline Howard and Maria were murdered in 1988, not 1991, when Tony was 18.

Steve took a deep breath and tried to consider everything that might change without the Tesseract, then he found himself laughing, almost hysterically. “No Snap, Thanos can’t complete the gauntlet. Oh my god, we stopped Thanos... By accident! We fought so hard, lost so much but here… Here he can’t…” And Steve was gasping for air, the laughter turning to sobs. 

After a moment Howard leaned forward and awkwardly patted him on the shoulder.

“Why was my timeline the one to suffer?” Steve asked quietly. “Why couldn’t someone have come back and saved us before he ever got started?”

“I’m sorry,” Howard said, not knowing what else he could possibly say. 

“There won’t even be an invasion in 2012,” Steve continued. “Thor said S.H.I.E.L.D.’s work on the Tesseract was a signal that Earth is ready for a higher form of war.”

“Er, no offense to this Thor,” Howard said, nonplussed. “But he’s an idiot.”

“What?” Steve blurted out.

Howard sighed, “Okay, maybe there are people out there, just waiting for planets to reach a certain level of technology before they’re ‘fun’ to defeat but I’m going out on a limb as saying most aliens aren’t that alien: They don’t go to war with someone because they’ve gain the ability to present a challenge but because they have something the other side wants… And if they’re a backward world with no ability to prevent whatever it is from being taken? So much the better. If the Tesseract sent out a signal, it wasn’t that the Earth was ready for ‘a higher form of war’ it was simply that we had it, had something worth taking.”

“But they didn’t come until S.H.I.E.L.D. started trying to make weapons from the Tesseract,” Steve said. 

Howard turned to stare out the window, “Steve, how much do you know about interstellar distances?”

Steve shook his head.

“Some of those stars we look at every night, they burned out thousands of years ago but the light that left before they did is still traveling toward the Earth. We’ll still see them for centuries after they’re gone.”

“I don’t understand,” Steve said.

“Schmidt and Zola were working with the Tesseract during the War, I’ve been studying it since it was recovered,” Howard said quietly. “What I’m saying is that the signal’s likely already been sent… It just takes a while for another planet to receive it and respond. Maybe they’ll notice that it’s stopped. Maybe they’ll lose interest… Or maybe they’ll come to the last place it was seen to look for clues. What I’m saying is, its a little early to declare Earth safe from invasion… Before he had his glove of doom, what’d this Thanos do to planets he visited?”

“He would kill half the population at random,” Steve said quietly. 

“Oh yeah, we’ve still got some preparing to do,” Howard replied. “The Tesseract going missing might end up bringing him faster, we don’t know. So what else. What did we do with the Tesseract in the forty years that we’re not going to have it now?” 

Steve thought for several moments, “One of our heavy hitters after the Snap, she got her powers from something to do with the Tesseract in the 90’s. I -um- I guess we lose her.” Steve looked ashamed, “I don’t know much of what she did, she operated largely off-planet and I didn’t meet her until After… People didn’t talk casually about Before, just too many triggers. We’d all lost too much.” 

“Okay,” Howard said. He hesitated for a moment. “Do you want to come downstairs, maybe get outside for a bit?” A look of shame crossed his face. “It’s been three months since you were captured.” 

“Three months?” Steve asked, his voice cracking at the realization of how long his old friends had imprisoned him in that hell. 

Howard flinched, “Yeah, it took awhile for us to be willing to believe that you were Steve Rogers back from the dead after twenty-five years. And to be fair, you’re not our Steve… On that subject, do you have a slightly more precise idea of where they found you than ‘the Arctic Ocean’? Because I’ve been looking there for awhile and now that we know you’re- I mean he’s actually alive- Well, it’s gained a bit more urgency you might say.”

“I hadn’t- I’m- He’s- I forgot-” Steve stammered inarticulately. “I exist in this time too.”

Howard nodded, “And I figure we shouldn’t just wait. Who knows if the event that triggers finding our Steve is still intact.”

“You’re, you’re right-“ Steve realized guiltily. It was uncomfortably easy for him to just write off the Steve Rogers of this timeline. Peggy and Howard felt real, maybe even more real than the elderly Peggy he’d met in 2012 or the Howard he’d seen murdered in Zemo’s horrible video- “We have to find Bucky. We have to get him away from HYDRA!” Steve exclaimed.

“Yeah, mentioned that before and I am a genius-“

“We have to get him back before they make him kill you,” Steve finished.

“Oh…” Howard sat down heavily. “Yeah, let’s do that. Not getting murdered, that sounds good to me. When? I mean, say we rescue Barnes. What stops HYDRA from sending someone else?”

“December 16th, 1988,” Steve said. “You were transporting a recreation of the Super Soldier Serum. Your wife was in the car.”

Howard swallowed heavily. “Damn. Tony?”

“He was-” Steve remembered the footage he’d been shown of a young, wild and terribly self-destructive Tony Stark and didn’t say Tony had been okay after his parents’ sudden deaths. 

“Right, of course, Tony was fine,” Howard said to himself, “I met him didn’t I?”

“He took over as CEO of Stark Industries when he was twenty-one.”

“I wasn’t any older when I started SI, not much older when I was brought onto the Manhattan Project,” Howard said. Then he added, “Twenty-one seems a lot younger now than it did back then.” 

Steve looked away, uncomfortable.

“We can walk while we talk,” Howard decided steering Steve toward the door. They stepped over the child-gate across the top of the stairs and continued out to the grounds. It was pleasantly cool under the trees surrounding the house and Steve felt himself relaxing for the first time in… In longer than he could easily remember. 

“Thanos might be the endgame,” Howard said. “But HYDRA has to be our first priority. We can’t build the sort of stuff that it’d take to beat him when we’ve got a bunch of snakes in our floorboards waiting to take whatever we build and turn it against us. And I’m not just saying that because I don’t fancy being murdered by them.”

“So what do we do?” Steve suddenly found himself smiling, “I can’t remember how long it’s been since I could say that. In 2012 I’d been unfrozen for just a few weeks before I was back in combat and they were telling me I was the right guy to straighten out everything wrong about a future I could barely wrap my head around.” 

“First off, it’s generally better to wait and see what Peg does before trying to plan anything too detailed,” Howard confided. “She’s a force of nature, reminds a man why they name hurricanes after women… A fact she wants changed by the way ”

“When do think Peggy will be back?” Steve asked.

Howard shrugged, “Sooner or later. Once she’s got enough of a plan to know what back-up she needs.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So Steve doesn’t mention Howard’s Tesseract research being the groundwork for Tony’s arc reactor. It’s not supposed to be Steve being self-involved. I’m just inclined to think that that knowledge is fairly limited in-verse. Tony clearly knows: Howard leaves a message in 1974 about this new element that he can theorize but can’t make, Tony goes back to 1970 to look for the Tesseract in his father’s lab… I think it can be safely assumed that Tony knew what project his father had given up on by ‘74. But there’s no reason anyone would have shared that with Steve. Also I haven’t seen Captain Marvel so all I can do is quickly write her out.
> 
> Hurricanes were given female names from 1953 to 1979 when male names were added to the naming rotation.


	4. Not Just Me

Ten days after Peggy and Howard got him out of that room, Steve woke up to the sound of a baby crying incessantly. Reflexively he groped for his smart phone then remembered that he wasn’t in the twenty-first century anymore and fumbled for the switch on the nightstand, _‘When were LED displays invented?’_ he wondered tangentially as he peered at the flip clock. It showed the date as well as the time, Howard had found it for Steve as soon as he realized how much Steve worried about losing time. _‘Suck it up Rogers, at least you know who you are when you wake-up,’_ he reminded himself viciously.

The baby was still wailing, loud distressed cries broken only by the need to draw a new breath. Steve pulled on a pair of pants and crept out into the hallway. As he got closer he heard Howard, “You’re not hungry. You’re wet. Damn it Tony what is wrong with you?” He sounded nearly as distressed as the baby.

“Howard?” Steve called, hesitantly poking his head into what he realized was a nursery.

“Steve, you’re a lifesaver!” Howard declared. Without giving Steve the option of refusing he shoved the tiny, red-faced and screaming infant into Steve’s arms. “Ana took a bad turn. With Jarvis tagging along after Peg, Maria went to the hospital with her. She promised Tony wouldn’t even know they were gone.”

Steve stared down at the baby he was holding, Tony. Only a couple months old, the baby didn’t resemble the man Steve had known, had fought, at all. With his eyes screwed shut as he screamed with all his might, Steve couldn’t even say if his eyes looked the same or if they were still baby-blue. Steve’s hands started shaking and he didn’t know if he was more afraid of holding the baby too tight or dropping him. _The face-plate ripped away, revealing a bruised and bloody face. Steve raised his shield over his head and it was only the expectation of his own death in Tony’s eyes that made him redirect his strike._ Iron Man, the one he’d fought, wasn’t the tiny baby he was holding. Logic didn’t matter. Steve thought he was going to throw up.

“Well, what do you know,” Howard remarked in something like amazement as he took the screaming infant back. “I’m _not_ the only person in the world he hates. You have any ideas? I’ve tried feeding him, changing him- completely unnecessarily it turned out. He’s been at it a good fifteen minutes now, I’m starting to think he’s going to cry himself sick… Oh shit, you’re having another panic attack. Okay, yeah, I can see it. Tony’s screeching is practically as bad that shit Peg was blasting your brain out with.”

Steve latched onto Howard’s voice, the cadence and irreverence shared between father and son, a point of consistency in a world that kept yanking the rug out from beneath his feet. “Colic?” he suggested weakly, remembering Clint saying something about Nate crying incessantly for a couple months.

“He cries because he cries, that’s really astonishing parenting advice Steven,” Howard complained, raising his voice to be heard over Tony’s wailing.

“Howard? Just me!” a girl’s voice shouted.

“Stephie! You’re an angel,” Howard called back hurrying out to meet her with Tony. Steve followed after him and saw a young woman with wavy dark hair, a short, red dress with billowing sleeves and knee high white boots. “So, I didn’t wake you.” Howard observed as he gratefully passed the baby over.

“One word to Mom and you won’t have anyone to call for late night baby emergencies,” the girl, Stephie, threatened. She put Tony against her shoulder. “Where are the burp clothes?” she asked.

“The what?” Howard asked. “And Shelly’s got her driver's license now doesn’t she?”

Stephie shook her head in disgust as she brushed past Howard and Steve. “If I were Jarvis where would I…” she said to herself as she looked around the nursery. “The most convenient place of course.” She swooped down on a nightstand by the rocking chair and pulled a hand towel out of the drawer then flipped it over her free shoulder and transferred the baby over. A few pat’s on the back and there was a mess of partly digested milk on the towel and the baby was cooing contentedly.

“I’ll let you get him back to sleep,” Howard said making a less than graceful retreat. “Steve, you want a drink? I need a drink.”

“Alcohol doesn’t do anything for me since the serum,” Steve reminded him.

“So? This is the expensive stuff, you drink it for taste not to get soused, or at least that’s what my wife tells me,” Howard replied as he poured them both a shot, knocked his back and poured a second one. “This parenting,” Howard shook his head. “I’ve never NOT been good at something I tried my hand at before.”

“Join the rest of us mere mortals, genius,” Stephie said as she joined them. She claimed the untouched tumbler in front of Steve.

“If your mom asks, I didn’t give that to you,” Howard said. “He’s sleeping?”

“Out like a light. How’s Ana?”

Howard grimaced, “Looks like it’s back. I’m guessing she knew for awhile but just didn’t want to say. If your mom calls to check on you tell her to send Jarvis home.”

“Hell, three years this time, I thought she had it beat,” Stephie sighed. “I’ll pass it on to Shelly; Mom’s started to believe I’m old enough _not_ to check up on me every night.”

“Speaking of,” Howard’s eyes swept over Stephie’s outfit. “A boy got you out at two in the morning?” he asked. “I might not be as scary as your mom but I’ve been that boy often enough, I can souse out his intentions.”

“No boy,” Stephie stated firmly. “Just dancing. Sometimes it’s good to forget everything but the music and the movement.” She jerked a thumb at Steve, “Who’s he? And I’d rather not be lied to.”

“He’s not very discreet is he?” Howard replied. “Stephie, meet your namesake.”

“Steve- Stephanie Sousa, Peggy’s oldest.”

“And yet the whole world knows the story of how he died,” Stephie said bluntly.

“It’s a long story,” Steve said. He thought about his seventy years in the ice and now the time travel/alternate reality aspect. “A really long story.”

“I don’t have time for those,” Stephie replied. “Howard, move to a guest room. I’m taking yours in case Tony wakes up cranky again.”

“Thank you!” Howard exclaimed. “Maria’s determined not to bring in a nanny,” he explained to Steve. “But you saw, Tony hates me.”

“He wouldn’t if you’d stop handling him like you expect him to explode,” Stephie scolded.

“How many times do I have to tell you all: I don’t treat Tony like a bomb, I’m good with bombs!” Howard huffed.

“I’ve got a midterm tomorrow,” Stephie hinted.

“Yeah, yeah, I’ll go grab what I need,” Howard replied.

Steve felt a vague feeling of panic when he realized that Howard was leaving him alone with Peggy’s unimpressed, nearly adult daughter. Stephie ignored him, sipping slowly from her- Well technically, Steve’s drink until Howard came back with a pile of clothes and toiletries.

“Night Howard, Dead Guy,” she said.

“I don’t think she likes me,” Steve observed after he heard the bedroom door shut down the hall.

Howard shrugged, “Her dad’s dead and the legendary love of her mom’s life shows up, what did you expect? ... You know, now that I’ve figured out who he is, I think I’m actually glad I ran into your friend, even with stealing the Tesseract- It wasn’t like I was getting anywhere with the damn thing, current day technology is just too limiting. It’s -um- reassuring to know my son isn’t always going to hate me.” Howard gave Steve a hard look, “If he only made peace with me after I died, I don’t want to know.”

Steve didn’t say anything and Howard sighed. “Yeah, easier to be perfect when you’re dead.”

“Maybe I could lead the team to retrieve… Well, me,” Steve found himself saying. “I might remember… something if I’m there.”

“So that was the problem, or at least a part of it.” Howard said. “Good to know.”


	5. Lines in the Sand

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I was looking at when Bill Foster and Elias Starr should start figuring into the story. 
> 
> Hank has his falling out with Howard and leaves S.H.I.E.L.D. after losing Jan in 1987. Bill and Hank have their falling out prior to that. Elihas Starr also had to have _his_ falling out with Hank before Hank left S.H.I.E.L.D. Bill Foster is a professor in “Ant-Man and Wasp”, assuming that not every Marvel scientist is a protege who graduates early Hank, Starr and Bill Foster should all have finished schooling in their mid-twenties to early thirties. Hank’s working for S.H.I.E.L.D. in 1970, assume they snatched him up right out of college, let’s say he’s born around 1945 and I’ll say Jan’s of a similar age because it’s nice having an action girl besides Peggy around. That works out okay, puts Hank and Jan having Hope in their mid-30’s, which is a lot more typical than Howard waiting until his 50’s to have a kid. 
> 
> The wiki page calculates Bill Foster’s birthdate as approximately 1965, based on the actor’s age. If he’s in his mid-twenties when he’s working on Project: G.O.L.I.A.T.H. then that would put it in the early 90’s -screech- Eh, Maybe Bill was a lab assistant or something who goes back to college and gets his Ph.D. after Hank leaves S.H.I.E.L.D. But assuming that S.H.I.E.L.D. doesn’t hire lab assistants who haven’t finished high school that still leaves Bill joining SHIELD around 1983 at the earliest, more likely he should have B.S. at minimum so ‘87, which is a pretty tight window. Only a couple months for him to work on G.O.L.I.A.T.H. and then leave project because Hank’s an ass before Hank leaves S.H.I.E.L.D. I’m inclined to ignore the wiki calculation for Bill’s age and assume that his work with Hank was in the early 80’s AND he already had his Ph.D., so born closer to 1950 than 1965. 
> 
> Watching AM&W, I’d assumed that Elihas Starr’s work with Hank overlapped Bill’s… But actually I can’t think of anything that confirmed that Bill knew Elihas before he was forced out of S.H.I.E.L.D. Due to Bill’s work with Hank, they would have put him in contact with Ava regardless of whether or not he knew her father, just because he was the closest thing they had to an expert on the Quantum Realm. So there’s no reason Elihas can’t be considerably older than Bill.

Two days later Steve saw a car race up the drive while he was on his morning run. He lengthened his stride and made it back to the house only moments after the car was parked. Peggy stepped out of the car and strode up the steps with barely a glance at Steve. Hank Pym and a woman Steve didn’t recognize followed in her wake. 

Howard met them at the door. “I dropped Jarvis off at the hospital,” Peggy informed him briskly. “Maria should be on her way home shortly.”

“I’ve been getting reports,” Howard said. “I think it best we count Jarvis out for this adventure.”

Peggy nodded, “Not his sort of thing anyway.” 

“In other news... I haven’t heard anything on the police bands about the discovery of a dead not-so-former Nazi scientist?” Howard asked.

“If I’d killed him what makes you think they’d find the body?” Peggy replied.

“That what happened?” 

Peggy grimaced. “No. The information checked out,” she said, her voice tight. “More than checked out. Jarvis and I managed to identify three of Zola’s lieutenants and over a dozen of their subordinates. Kill Zola and I just open up a spot for someone else to fill… We have to clean house, Howard, thoroughly.”

“ _What_ is going on?” Hank demanded. He jerked at thumb at Steve, “The last thing I hear we’re leaning toward believing what’s left of the team who stole my particles and the Tesseract actually is Steve Rogers,” he glanced towards the woman Steve didn’t know, “That Steve Rogers. The next thing I know Carter’s dragging Jan and I out of bed saying S.H.I.E.L.D.’s been infiltrated by HYDRA?”

“Long story short, he’s Steve Rogers,” Howard said. “But not our Steve. He and his friend were using a potential future adaptation of your tech to time travel via the Quantum Realm. He’s still hear so they failed, in the future he came from half the universe died. From what he tells me, we can’t change that but by coming here and taking the Tesseract he and his friend make this an alternate reality, our future is what we make it… We still might want to find the time travel expert his team consulted and get a few clarifications on that point.”

“Time travel expert?” Jan asked. 

“Sorcerer Supreme, Ancient One, bases out of a hidden city in Tibet with a satellite office in Greenwich,” Howard relaid blandly.

“Yeah, I’ll skip wasting my time,” Hank said. 

“Scepticism about alternate realities and time travel can wait. I have confirmation that HYDRA is an active infestation in S.H.I.E.L.D.” Peggy’s lips thinned, “Dan didn’t know what was going on but he never trusted Zola… And two months ago Zola got tired of working around him.”

“Probably far from the only time an ‘obstacle’ was eliminated.” Howard’s shoulders tightened. “Steve, you know anything about an Anton Vanko?”

Steve thought for a moment, knowing he’d heard the name before. “Shortly before I was thawed out a man named Vanko tried to kill Tony,” he recalled. 

“Who?” Hank asked.

“My kid,” Howard said shortly. He turned to Steve, “Why?”

“The S.H.I.E.L.D. report on the incident said something about Vanko blaming you for stealing his father’s design-”

“And having him deported,” Howard finished. “But that doesn’t tell me anything I don’t know. I _liked_ Anton, he was a friend, someone who could keep up with me in the lab. When I found evidence he’d defected…” Howard shook his head. “He always swore he’d been framed. Is there any chance that was true?”

“The report didn’t indicate that but it was compiled while S.H.I.E.L.D. was compromised,” Steve said.

Howard grimaced, “You’re not the best crystal ball.”

“I was frozen until 2012 and after I came back,” Steve shook his head. “There was never enough time. Between missions I learned what I needed to know to function in the twenty-first century. I caught up on some broad strokes of the history I missed but, to be honest, I didn’t really want to know how everyone I’d known had died or even how they’d gotten on with their lives after I was gone. Howard, what I know about your death, I didn’t go looking for and,” Steve sighed. “I probably couldn’t have done a worse job of handling if I’d been actively trying to screw up. I couldn’t change what had happened and I just… Didn’t want to deal with it.” 

“It doesn’t matter,” Peggy said firmly. “We have plenty on our plate right now. HYDRA is well entrenched in S.H.I.E.L.D. I can trust the four of you and perhaps a half-dozen others in S.H.I.E.L.D. but beyond that we don’t know who Zola has turned. I refrained from killing him because we can use him to ferret out the rest of the organization. And while I’m afraid I might not be much more than Director in name, as entrenched as HYDRA is, I am still the one who assigns missions.”

Howard smirked, “HYDRA moles suddenly start pulling the most dangerous missions?”

“We might even help their casualty rates in the field along,” Peggy agreed casually. She tossed Steve a file, “Welcome to S.H.I.E.L.D. I don’t advise making friends with your co-workers because most of them I’m going to want you to help them depart this world.”

“Are we seriously talking about playing judge, jury and executioner for a significant fraction of S.H.I.E.L.D.?” Jan asked.

“They’re HYDRA,” Peggy said. “It’s far from the first time you’ve done that with an enemy agent.”

“In the field,” Hank protested. “Undeclared wars are still wars but we’re talking about our own people.”

“No, we’re not,” Peggy said flatly. “We’re talking about HYDRA murdering Dan and who knows how many others.”

“I’m with her,” Howard said. “The difference between this and what we do in the field is we know the USSR and China are the other side of in the Cold War, HYDRA’s agents have been pretending to be ours, the better to stab us in the back.”

Hank didn’t look satisfied so Steve added, “In my timeline we didn’t realize that S.H.I.E.L.D. had been infiltrated until 2014. I don’t know how many people HYDRA killed between now and then but in 2014, with minutes to spare, we stopped them from launching a weapon that would have put the world under their control. As their first pass they planned to kill over seven hundred thousand people who HYDRA considered a threat to their goals.”

“My god,” Jan said quietly. “Could they have done that?”

Howard nodded. “Based on what Steve’s told me, it’s technically feasible. What’s worse is I think we’re going to need weapons like that if we expect to combat the threat Steve’s team ultimately lost to. If the enemy is coming in spaceships we want to blow them up before they land.”

“But you make a weapon like that and you have to worry about it being turned on Earth,” Hank said. “Why do think I’m so ‘paranoid’ about my particles? I know how easily they could be misused. And that was without accounting for the possibility of _time travel!_ ” he spat

“We can discuss making weapons later,” Peggy declared. “HYDRA is using S.H.I.E.L.D., using what we built to further the very thing we created it to fight, and that is going to stop. _We_ have to put a stop to it, there’s no one else. S.H.I.E.L.D.’s internal oversight… Well, it was obviously insufficient.”

Steve winced when he heard Howard mutter under his breath, “Suppose that’ll sell better than ‘Oversight? We don’t need no stinking oversight!’”

“The FBI, CIA? They don’t know we exist besides our jurisdiction is much broader than theirs, we can’t answer to them. The UN is hopelessly deadlocked by the inclusion of our primary adversaries and NATO’s only a bit better. If we don’t solve this ourselves S.H.I.E.L.D. will be disbanded or brought under the jurisdiction of another agency. We do what none of the rest are capable of,” Peggy said fiercely. “If we let them make us like every other agency out there we will be just as helpless in the face of the threats facing this world.” 

_‘It sounds a lot like what the Sokovia Accords tried to do to the Avengers,’_ Steve thought. _‘But S.H.I.E.L.D. let HYDRA grow unnoticed. Even Peggy agreed that tearing S.H.I.E.L.D. down was the right thing to do. Would it have been better if S.H.I.E.L.D. had external oversight?’_

Hank and Jan traded a long look, then Hank sighed, “Okay, we’re in.”

* * *

Steve watched as Peggy’s car sped away as soon as they’d hashed out the first few steps of their plan. “Am I imagining things or is she avoiding me?” he asked.

“Well,” Howard grimaced, “Now that we know that you’re you she’s probably feeling guilty about the whole -um- torture thing…. And I don’t know? Marrying Daniel. Watching the two of them dance around each other, and your ghost, it was _painful_.”

Uncomfortable, Steve started flipping through the file Peggy had thrown at him. “Roger Stevens? Isn’t that a little obvious?” he asked.

“You won’t forget to answer to it,” Howard said.

“Still,” Steve objected.

“You’re a decade older than you were in the USO posters and films. And,” Howard leaned over and flipped several pages into the file. “We won’t come out and say that you’re enhanced but when people start noticing we let drop that I had a sample of your- Steve Rogers’ blood from Project: Rebirth. As our story goes, in the early fifties I managed to extract some DNA from the sample… I’ll throw in the occasional remark about the name catching my eye when I was selecting my volunteer, switch up cause and effect a bit. People might even buy in that the injection of DNA could have made you look more like Steve Rogers... There was no initial effect and I deemed the effort a failure. I put you to work for SI. A decade plus passes. The rest of blood samples in my possession are lost,” Howard’s expression turned sour. “Then, there’s a suitably bizarre lab accident- Not exactly unheard of around here. -And it triggers the latent serum in your blood. S.H.I.E.L.D., Peggy, quietly takes charge of you, VOILA! It also has the benefit of also explaining why I’d suddenly step up efforts to recover Steve Rogers’ body from the Arctic Ocean.” 

Steve looked grim, “Which I’ll be involved in- Along with teams made up primarily of HYDRA agents.”

“It’s easy to misplace a body or fifty in the ocean,” Howard said carelessly. “With a little luck we’ll even recover one while we’re there.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I gather from wiki that one of the tie-in comics has Howard confronting Anton Vanko and him confirming that he was selling secrets but I don’t read the tie-ins, don't really give a damn and am going to ignore that.
> 
> Is it strange that AO3 has a tag for Janet Van Dyne/Brock Rumlow but not for Janet van Dyne/Hank Pym?


	6. Boat Ride North

Steve scratched at the beard he was allowing to grow out to hide his identity for a second time as he climbed up the gangplank to the repurposed whaling ship that would be their home base for the next three months while they searched the Arctic Ocean for the downed Valkyrie.

Peggy had allowed a few rumors to escape that there was a renewed interest in the super soldier serum and certainty that the recovery of Captain America’s body would be the key to it’s recreation. Zola had done most of the work to fill the crew with HYDRA operatives for them. Of the thirty-six man crew it was Steve’s mission to make sure only twelve returned.

He glanced around the deck then his eyes widened as he spotted Jan van Dyne leaning casually against the railing. Steve made an effort to look inconspicuous he made his way over to her side. “Stevens, you’d be more discreet if you let everyone think you’ve got the hots for me,” she told him in a low, amused voice. “It’s widely known in S.H.I.E.L.D. that Hank’s a paranoid, jealous bastard… No one’s going to warn you off, they’ll just make sure they’re around for the fireworks when the mission’s over.”

“What are you doing here?” Steve asked. “I thought you were Pym’s partner?”

“I _date_ Hank,” Jan said. “I haven’t been his lab partner since college.”

_‘I never really took the time to get to know the other Avengers,’_ Steve thought. _‘Bad enough that I got surprised by Clint’s family, I didn’t know about Tony’s break-up when newspapers worldwide reported the first hint that he and Pepper were back together. Even Sam, it was enough that he was ready to follow Captain America anywhere he might lead, I never asked what happened to his work at the VA when he was spending his time helping me search for Bucky.’_ He took a deep breath, “That sounds like a story?” he prompted.

Jan chuckled. “Hank came to S.H.I.E.L.D.’s attention after a very public fight with his doctoral thesis advisor. His advisor thought Hank’s research into shrinking particles was utter nonsense and a waste of the University’s resources. But Howard dug into it a little and decided it was feasible; no one at S.H.I.E.L.D. argues if Howard Stark says something, no matter how outlandish, is possible. He went out, had a few words with Hank about his history with the Atom Bomb and how some ideas shouldn’t be out and about for just anyone to make use of; Hank changed his thesis a week later. It was starting to look like Howard had done too good of a job,” Jan continued. “Because he finished his degree, came to work for S.H.I.E.L.D. and he wouldn’t share his research with anyone here either but based on what you’ve told us about HYDRA, Hank’s been just the right amount of paranoid.”

Steve nodded. “So where do you come into this story?” he asked.

“Peggy assigned me to shadow Hank until he’d finished his degree, just in case some of S.H.I.E.L.D.’s competitors had also noticed him,” Jan said. “And that’s how I ended up enrolled in Berkley’s biology program as a grad student.”

“You’re a field agent?”

“Finishing School wasn’t my thing,” Jan said with a wry grin. “Peggy recruited me out of a police station after I got in a little trouble trying to find some meaning in life. Two years later I was graduating first in my class from S.H.I.E.L.D. Academy of Operations,” Jan replied.

“So you were assigned as Pym’s bodyguard and the two of you just got together?” Steve asked skeptically. He remembered Peggy not wanting to be romantically involved during the war. “Doesn’t seem very professional.”

Jan laughed. “My cover was that I was his girlfriend,” she said. “And even if that hadn’t been my cover it would have been the rumor after the first three or four times one of us was spotted leaving the other one’s room in the early morning; there were more than a few threats and not all of them ended up originating with classmates, professors or random people around town who he’d ticked off. So I know, better than most, that Hank’s not exactly Mr. Personality. He’s a genius, he knows it and he makes sure everyone around him knows it. He’d publically call his professors idiots. He called Howard Stark an uneducated tinkerer… But Hank can back up all that arrogance with results. Going to all those classes with him, I came out of the assignment with a new perspective on him: On top of being the real thing when it comes to genius he’s also a good guy,” she shrugged and added, “Deep down he’s a good guy. So when the assignment ended- Well, we didn’t stop dating, we just stopped pretending.”

“And here? You’re my backup?” Steve asked.

  
“Nope,” Jan said. “ _You_ are _my_ backup. If everything goes to hell and we get caught, I’m counting on you to pull our fat out of the fire…. And now it’s time to go to work.” Steve caught a brief glance of a bulky remote as Jan slipped her hand into her pocket. Then there was a bang and the gangplank gave way under two men who were boarding. As they fell into the water the ship lurched toward the dock, smashing them. The ship’s departure was delayed for a few hours as the two bodies were recovered and replacement crew sent.

“Well that’s two down,” Jan remarked. “Peggy will let us know if Zola was sufficiently on the ball to get more of his men in as replacements.”

 

* * *

 

Peggy walked into her office and found Howard occupying her chair. She thought about shoving his feet off her desk, decided that wasn’t dramatic enough and yanked the chair backward, spilling him on the floor.

“Peggy!” he protested, “I’m not as young as I used to be.”

“Then don’t act like a miscreant,” Peggy replied primly.

“And here I came because I was worried about you,” he replied. His expression turned serious, “If Steve and Jan do their job right they’ll be striking from the shadows. Pym and I are going to be analyzing Zola’s patterns, ferreting out his co-conspirators but that’s data analysis. You’re going to be obvious roadblock, the one denying him supplies and sending his people off on missions they don’t come back from.”

“And he killed Dan,” Peggy said. “If we can believe-” She grimaced, “Him, Stevens -Zola will try to murder my successors as well. What I can’t help but wonder is: What did I do wrong that Zola _didn’t_ find it necessary to come after me?”

**Author's Note:**

> Yeah, I should be writing other things but this is where my head's at at the moment.


End file.
